W: Well…yes, cannons are very loud.
D: Uh-huh. And it’s hard to describe, if you’ve never been near gunfire, um, how loud it is. It’s louder than thunder, louder than a jetliner flying low. It’s louder than one of those pneumatic drills. The only thing louder is bombs. A lot of noise. Of course, we all stuffed rags in our ears, but you can hear a sound like that through your nose. Through your elbows and feet. [laughs] After you’ve been firing on auto for a while, the sound takes you over, like God, in a way. I mean you’re completely deaf, but it seems you can still hear thingsinside the noise, like the clang of the breech closing, a kind of hammer-on-anvil sound, and the rattle of the pawls and rammer in the autoloader, like a train on railroad tracks? And the brass falling, tinkle tankle, like bells. You shouldn’t be able to hear any of that, but you do. Or seem to. And then there’s the sound of the shells, the roar in the air and the bang of the explosion, but you’re not so aware of that so much, except when you’re firing single rounds. Are you bored yet? [laughs]
W: Not at all. You make it sound very interesting. Where did you learn all this about…what did you say it was? An automatic cannon?
D: Yes, a Bofors gun. From the manual. Foy always said read the f…read the dah-dah, manual, RTFM. And I did. Plus I had some help from a friend.
W: Who is Foy?
D: Percival Orne Foy. The late. A teacher I had.
W: In school.
D: This was more extracurricular. He taught me a lot of stuff, and I just sucked it in, never mind if I thought it was worth anything. I just gave myself over, I was so tired of thinking for myself. That was before I joined the Bloods and God found me. I was real surprised when so much of it came in useful. His providence is sometimes extremely strange in its working out.
W: By Bloods?do you mean the street gang?
D: [laughs] No, I meant the Society of Nursing Sisters of the Blood of Christ. The Bloods. Which we’re not supposed to call ourselves, but we all do. Did. I did.
W: Excuse me, are you saying that you’re a nun?
D: Oh, no. I was only a postulant. I never took vows. And they threw me out, needless to say.
W: Why was that?
D: Because we’re a medical order. We…I mean they take the Hippocratic Oath on top of their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. To do no harm. And I did a lot of harm, may God forgive me.
W: What sort of harm did you do?
D: It’s in my confession.
W: Yes, but Emmylou, this, what we’re doing here, is not part of the criminal case. We’re dealing here on a basis of confidentiality. What you tell me won’t be part of the court record and can’t be used against you.
D: You’re supposed to find out if I’m crazy or not.
W: Well, really, if you’re fit to stand trial, to aid in your own defense.
D: You wouldn’t understand.
W: Try me.
D: Do you believe in the devil?
W: The important thing here is do you believe in him?
D: Oh, I’m so tired! I am so tired of this. I thought it was over, that he didn’t have a use for me anymore, that I’d be let alone to live in peace, and now it’s all starting again, and people are going to get hurt.
W: Who’s using you?
[Silence, thirty-two seconds]
W: Who’s going to be hurt?
D: Anyone. Anyone around me. Maybe you.
W: And…the devil is going to make this happen, to hurt people?
D: Or God. It’s a crossfire. You can’t understand this. It won’t fit in your kind of head.
W: Then help me to understand.
D: It’s right in front of your eyes, but you can’t see it. I’m sorry. That detective did, though…Oh, Christ, oh Christ have mercy!
W: Emmylou? It’s very important that you talk to me. I just want to help you.
[Silence, one minute, twenty-two seconds]
W: Emmylou, what is it? Did you see something?
D: Could I go back to the jail now? I don’t feel like talking anymore.
INTERVIEW TERMINATED AT 11:38A.M.
Lorna Wise listens to the tape a third time, checking it against the transcript, occasionally stopping the flow of words with the foot pedal and writing in her notebook. After that, she reads through her notes, feeling dissatisfied with the familiar jargon. Inappropriate affect. Hallucinations. Fabulation. Resistance. Religious mania. Particularly disturbing, this last. Is Emmylou Dideroff a religious maniac? How is that different from being merely religious, if mere religion means ascribing reality to what cannot be verified by others? And what happened there at the end? An actual hallucination? She leans back in her squeaking swivel chair, kicks off her shoes, puts her stockinged feet up on the table, and rubs her eyes.
She is in a room reserved for such interviews in a nondescript county building on NW Thirteenth Street, convenient to both the Dade County Women’s Detention Center and the main jail. It is a small room, the size of a rich man’s bathroom, in two shades of brown, like a mutt. There is a wooden table with an artificial wood-grain surface, a swivel chair for the interviewer, a straight chair for the interviewee, one dirty window with a heavy grille on it, a four-tube fluorescent fixture with one tube dimmed out. And a wall clock, which she now consults. No time for this mooning, she thinks; she has another interview in twelve minutes. The county likes her to keep things churning.
Religious mania. Lorna picks up her copy ofDSM-IV, theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual, a thick maroon- colored paperback that exists to classify all the ills that mind is heir to, and thumbs through it. She does not recall such a classification, and if she does not, there is most probably none, for she has the whole volume practically by heart. Yes, here it is: a one-liner noting that some schizophrenic hallucinations took religious forms. And, helpfully,”Hallucinations may also be a normal part of religious experience in certain cultural contexts.” But not ours, typically. One can apparently no longer officially be a religious maniac. In the materialist religiosity of America we don’t see saints or demons anymore. Other than that, there was no way that Dideroff is schizo. She had a job, no history of hospitalization, was clearly alert, well spoken, in control, or at least in as much control as any number of mental health professionals Lorna knew. So: initial diagnosis is: 297.1 delusional disorder, grandiose type. The “grandiose” type is because of the religion stuff. If you think God is talking to you, that’s grandiose per se, according to theDSM.
Lorna writes this diagnosis down on the appropriate line on the court form. There is a larger space for describing the subject defendant, and here she inscribes a precis of her impressions, or as much of it as she thinks is to the point, and copies in the results of the tests?Rorschach, MMPI, Wechsler IQ?she has had administered to Emmylou Dideroff over the past week. Now her ballpoint hesitates, because here is where she must write down the magic formula, attesting that in her professional opinion the subject knows the nature of the charges against her, and the consequences if she is convicted, and that she is capable of assisting in her own defense. She finds that she is reluctant to write this statement.
She puts her pen down and again leans back in her chair. Five minutes, the clock tells her. She is thinking about something her forensic psych professor once did in class. Professor Benicke, one of her favorites, may be the reason she’s chosen this peculiar and not very prestigious and certainly unremunerative branch of psychology. A winter’s afternoon at Cornell, the sun slipping behind the bluffs at a quarter to four, scant leaden light through the windows, the room darkened, the clicking sound of a film projector. He’d shown them nearly the whole of Carl Dreyer’s 1928 film,The Passion of Joan of Arc. They had all watched the silent movie in silence, and then as the lights came up on the blinking class, he’d demanded: Well? Is she competent? Forget she’s a saint, forget the trial was rigged, forget the politics. From what you see, is this woman competent to stand trial on a capital charge?
It had been an interesting debate. What had she said? She knows where she is, she knows the gravity of the charge, she puts up a spirited, logical defense, and it doesn’t matter if she’s hearing voices. If we declared everyone
